State Rep. Jim Walsh (photo, left), a Republican who represents the Aberdeen area in Washington’s legislature, sported a Yellow Star of David at a political rally in Lacey on Saturday, June 26, 2021.
He was likening “the government’s efforts to protect people from a highly contagious virus with the Nazis’ murder of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust,” according to the Westport News (read story here). Those efforts are “an echo from history,” he said, adding, “In the current context, we are all Jews.”
This highly imaginative metaphor isn’t original. It’s being copycatted by Republicans all over the country, most infamously by Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). If the intent is to get attention, well, it does that … in the same way that scratching your crotch in public does.
Look, we get that GOP politicians are pandering to Republican voters who don’t want to get vaccinated. Nobody’s making them. We get that they don’t want to be punished for refusing to get vaccinated. Nobody’s punishing them; they have a constitutional right to be stupid and suicidal. We just don’t want to be in the same room with them, that’s all. They don’t have a right to kill us.
These are basically the same kind of people who keep cobras in their homes and let them escape (see story here). We have a right to protect ourselves from such people. In Washington, private possession of cobras is prohibited. They do it differently in North Carolina, but that’s their problem. Florida handles vaccines in a different way, too, and if Mr. Walsh doesn’t like how Washington does things he can always move to Florida.
As for his Yellow Star of David stunt, it’s childish. Light-years away from intelligent public policy debate. Makes him look like what he is, an idiot.
How about a little IQ test?
This …
Image credit: lechatnoir/Getty Images
… is not similar to this.
